Thursday, 24 January 2013

McDonald's vs McWorld

You can get great bibimbap just about anywhere. But you can only get a McDonald's bulgogi burger in Korea.

Jeb Boniakowski wants a giant McDonald's that carries all of its different global offerings. But if part of the point of travel is obtaining experiences you can't get elsewhere, and if we're not far off from being able to get everything everywhere,* the only force countering McWorld may well wind up being McDonald's regionalisation. And wouldn't that just piss off Naomi Klein. I say keep things as they are.**

Update: McDonald's should issue a special passport. Collect a stamp in your passport when you eat a country's special regional McDonald's dish. And some kind of prize for the person who collects the most stamps. You'd need to have a picture in the passport to stop folks' just mailing the passport to friends.

* Except for Ethiopean food in New Zealand. Why oh Why can't we set our immigration policy to give priority to underrepresented cuisines? [Update: Keith Ng tells me that this place is still open; I'd heard it closed. Hoorah!]

** Yes, part of my policy advice here is spite-based. Spite can be a reason.

3 comments:

Oh wow. I heard that place shut down after the Thai part changed ownership. Was that wrong? It's still there?! I've been to WGT a couple times since I'd heard it shut down and didn't cab out to investigate.

Had posted on it ages ago.http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2010/02/one-day-week-restaurant.html

I rarely let spite be a reason for things. But I list it when it is so that others can discount policy advice that flows from such undignified reasons. Would that all whose motivations came down to spite did similarly.